Background
The owners of a home in Yellowknife are expected to save more than $4,800 a year on energy bills because of energy-efficient renovations. Before starting the renovations, the homeowners had the Arctic Energy Alliance complete an EnerGuide home evaluation, which measures the energy used by a house and identifies areas for improvement.
The pre-renovated home was expected to use about 428 GJ of energy a year under standard operating conditions. Following the evaluation, the homeowners:
- replaced the oil furnaces with high-efficiency propane furnaces
- replaced the oil-fired hot water tank with a tankless propane water heater
- added insulation to a portion of the main wall
- replaced all windows with triple-pane vinyl windows
- replaced all doors with polyurethane-filled steel doors
- sealed drafts to reduce the air leakage by 10 percent
- installed a wood stove
The new furnaces, water heater, windows and doors were all ENERGY STAR® certified.
After the renovations were completed, the follow-up EnergGuide evaluation found that the house would expect to use roughly 304 GJ of energy a year—a savings of 29%.
Estimated Annual Savings
| House Component | Renovation Details | Annual Energy Savings (GJ) | Annual Cost Savings |
| Air tightness | 10% improvement (Air changes per hour decreased from 5.06 to 4.53) | 16 | $900 |
| Doors | Polyurethane-filled steel doors | 14 | $460 |
| Heating system | 96% AFUE condensing propane furnaces (from 83% EF oil furnaces) | 38 | $1,300 |
| Wall insulation | R8 semi-rigid insulation added to wall section | 5.3 | $450 |
| Water heater | 0.91 EF tankless propane water heater (from 0.54 EF oil-fired tank) | 12 | $450 |
| Windows | Triple-pane vinyl windows | 36 | $1,300 |
The above data is based on EnerGuide standard house conditions and 2018 fuel prices in Yellowknife.
In addition, the wood stove installed in the home should help save $900 per year if used about half the time.
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